One winter, Dervla Murphy and her six-year-old daughter explored 'Little Tibet' high up in the Karakoram Mountains in the frozen heart of the Western Himalayas. For three months they travelled on foot and on pony along the perilous Indus Gorge and into nearby valleys. Even when beset by crumbling tracks over bottomless chasms, an assault by a lascivious Kashmiri, the unnerving melancholy of the Balts, and Rachel's continual probing questions, this formidable traveller retained her enthusiasm for her surroundings and her sense of humour.

Hair-raising, gloriously subjective and with the quirky vitality of fiction, the resulting book is a classic of travel writing.